Tanjeel Islam Tameem, broadcast designer of a Bangladeshi television channel, was allegedly beaten to death at the beginning of this month in Dhaka. An investigation by the police later found the alleged involvement of Sheikh Rabaul Islam, an executive committee member of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party. Four days later, the BNP suspended him.
But Islam is not the only BNP member who’s trying to flex his muscles in the political vacuum that the ouster of Awami League has created in India’s next-door neighbour. According to an intelligence report leaked on social media, a legion of BNP leaders have kept themselves busy in extortion and land grabbing since the fall of the Awami League government in August 2024.
The report, dated 24 September, has been independently verified by ThePrint. And it paints a gory picture of what is in the offing for Bangladesh if the next general election takes place soon—the BNP believes it’ll come to power riding the anti-Awami League wave that has understandably swept the country.
According to the intelligence agencies, from extorting bus owners in the capital to trying to illegally take control of an oil depot in Narayanganj— some BNP leaders appear to have set their eyes on looting everyone and everything. To its credit, the party leadership has expelled some of its members, but, as it turns out, cleaning its rank and file of goons, thugs, and extortionists is going to be difficult, if not impossible for the party.
There are also signs that the party chain of command is breaking, and it doesn’t look committed to fighting the culture of thuggery that plagued Bangladesh’s politics during Sheikh Hasina’s rule. In fact, the BNP shows little interest in doing that job. It evidently doesn’t want to clean its fold of goons or let the Muhammad Yunus government carry out democratic reforms. Rather, the BNP wants to reap the political dividends that Hasina’s misrule and abuse of power miraculously handed over to the new government. Lately, the party has wanted to come to power as soon as it can— it has started to call for the declaration of an election date.
Hasina’s fall was indeed a miracle, but the BNP shouldn’t expect miracles to keep coming its way.
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The BNP—the rise and fall
Gen Ziaur Rahman was a valiant freedom fighter who founded the BNP in 1978 when Bangladesh, after the brutal assassination of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, was going through arguably the most turbulent time in its history.
Though a military strongman, he formed a centrist party that opened its doors to everyone. His party headquarters had an amalgam of strange allies—from the collaborators of the Pakistan Army to freedom fighters, Soviet-leaning Communists to Maoists and opportunist Awami Leaguers. At times, he even followed some socialist policies. The Communist Party of Bangladesh, the largest Left-wing party in the country, even participated in Rahman’s ‘canal digging programme’.
A few years after Gen Ershad assumed power in a bloodless coup, Khaleda Zia, Rahman’s wife, took over and was elected Prime Minister thrice. But the party’s slow decline and growing irrelevance started soon and saw its worst period during the Awami League’s last term in power.
Even today, the party leadership’s failure to read the pulse of the masses is monumental. Only 11 days before Hasina resigned and fled to India following student protests, BNP Secretary General Mirza Fakhfrul Islam Alamgir said his party was not involved in the agitation. Two days before the Awami League government fell, the BNP held an indoor press conference, threatening the government “with dire consequence if the innocent students are attacked by the ruling party men deliberately”. A day before Hasina was ousted, Alamgir demanded Hasina’s resignation, again at a press conference that took place in a room. The party leaders were absent from the streets, and there are reasons to believe that they had little clue as to what was going on.
The central coordination committee that spearheaded the mass upsurge, which Muhammad Yunus has called Bangladesh’s Second Independence, didn’t have a single member from the BNP’s student wing.
There is no denying that an overwhelming number of BNP activists participated in the movement and have laid down their lives. However, there are reasons to believe that the party does not want any real political reform to occur, instead it wants to go back to the halcyon days of 2002. Newspapers of the BNP’s last term in office are littered with corruption cases of its leaders, especially its Acting Chairperson Tarique Rahman, Khaleda Zia’s first son. The corruption cases against him might not stand in a fair trial because Hasina’s prosecution ran business like the way she ran the country. But neither Rahman nor the BNP leadership has filed a single lawsuit against these newspapers. It never sent any corrigenda protesting these reports.
One of these pieces called Tarique Rahman the ‘Graft Guru’. The Daily Star report, published in 2008, says, “Tarique, detained son of detained former prime minister Khaleda Zia, and Mamun worked in tandem to amass a fortune through misuse of power.” No corrigendum was sent. Rahman should explain why he has never filed file any defamation suit against the newspapers if these accusations are false.
Besides corruption, another accusation against him was hatching a conspiracy to kill Hasina. “The then Prime Minister and BNP chairperson Khaleda Zia’s political office ‘Hawa Bhaban’ was being used to plot the grenade attack,” another report said. Trying to kill the main opposition leader is a serious crime. And 20 years on, Rahman’s office has never sent a letter of protest to the newspaper nor did he take any legal action.
Are we to believe from this reluctance that these accusations are true and Rahman just wants to skirt the issues because he knows that sooner rather than later his party will come to power and all cases against him will be quashed?
Is the BNP coming to power?
The BNP believes that if a free election is held soon, it’ll come to power. It is relying on data from the pre-2008 era when the last free and fair election took place in Bangladesh. But nearly 63.7 per cent of Bangladesh’s population is under the age of 35 and most of these people, thanks to Hasina’s one farcical election after the other, have never voted. No one knows their voting pattern— they’ve never declared their commitment to any political party. Also, these young people have been at the forefront of the mass movement and grew up seeing the Awami League as corrupt and the BNP as weak. Most of them do not see the Jamaat-e-Islami as an option either as the party has a troubled history, considering its role in 1971, which most millennials and Gen-Z find a burden.
In this interregnum, a new political force claiming the centrist vacuum has the ability to bowl both the BNP and Jamaat over. For a large number of young people, the old is dead and it’s time to restart politics. The BNP leadership doesn’t look capable of handling these issues, as its Acting Chairperson is reluctant to face those who have long accused him of murder, nepotism and corruption.
Bangladesh needs a centrist political party, and it is quite clear that the BNP has a long way to go. It has to put a leash on its members who are grabbing people’s properties and extorting businesses. Tarique Rahman needs to come clean regarding his past and take action to prove his innocence. At present, the BNP ought to bring young people into its leadership with the realisation that old politics has fled with Hasina.
Ahmede Hussain is a Bangladeshi writer and journalist. He is the editor of The New Anthem: The Subcontinent in Its Own Words (Tranquebar Press; Delhi). He has just finished writing his first novel. He tweets @ahmedehussain. Views are personal.
(Edited by Humra Laeeq)